The minerals concession of the ‘national government of Moab’ — an annotated document

Abstract

Readers of Sir Alec Kirkbride's A Crackle of Thorns will recall the case of the minerals concession which the 'National Government of Moab' at Kerak awarded to a British businessman shortly before the Amir Abdallah's arrival in Transjordan, for a consideration.' The National government dissolved immediately afterwards. Its successors-whether in Amman, Jerusalem or London-refused to be committed by any of its acts. And yet the concession deserves to be resurrected for the student of history. It is no document of shattering impact. But it is a curious, and even illuminating, piece of Middle East reality after the First World War. And those of us who like to see even parish pump affairs sub specie aeternitatis may observe that here we have, after all, the very first commercial concession ever granted to a foreigner by an Arab government east of Suez. The following is a word-for-word reproduction of the 'translation of the concession' as transmitted by the Petroleum Department of the Board of Trade in London to the Colonial Office on November 7, 1921.2 The covering letter suggests that the Petroleum Department received the text from the Turkish Petroleum Company, now the Iraq Petroleum Company. It may be supposed that the original still rests in the latter's archives to which I have had no access.